The South Fork of the South Branch of the Chicago River, more commonly known as Bubbly Creek for its legendary pollution, merits a cover story (by Alby Gallun) in Crain’s this week:

“It doesn’t look like the most appealing river at that stretch, but as money comes in, the people are definitely going to fight to make sure it’s cleaned up,” says [Shawn] Reddy, who paid $1.2 million for a 6,600-square-foot house that’s being built right next to the notorious waterway in Bridgeport.

A cesspool of rotting livestock carcasses back when Chicago was Hog Butcher for the World, Bubbly Creek still gets a bit smelly in hot weather. The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago dumps millions of gallons of untreated sewer water into the 6,600-foot channel during heavy rains, and the sewage has nowhere to go because the creek has no current. The creek still bubbles, caused by gasses from decaying riverbed sediment floating to the surface.

And thus a strange little piece of Chicago’s environmental history goes: so filthy that much of it (the section south of Pershing) was simply obliterated, now lined with townhouses and parks and promises to magically clean it up. Interesting to note, though, that the current bubbliness comes from modern-day pollution and not offal from a previous century.